David M. Hale 6y

Dabo Swinney's tough love pushes Ray-Ray McCloud to new heights

CLEMSON, S.C. -- The return started with a burst of speed upfield, and Ray-Ray McCloud left three NC State tacklers in the dust. Then, he cut back between two more defenders, turned back upfield, sped past two more and cut back again before setting his sights on the end zone with a host of blockers ahead of him and nary a Wolfpack player in sight.

As he approached the goal line, a thought occurred to McCloud: Here comes the hard part.

"My focus was just crossing that line," McCloud said following the Nov. 4 game. "I just wanted to cross that line."

A little background: This wasn't McCloud's first punt return to the end zone. But it was the first time he made it over that line with the ball.

Last year, in a close game against Troy, McCloud engineered a similarly athletic sprint down the field, but just as he was about to score, he tossed the football aside in a casual celebration. The clip went viral, showing up on SportsCenter and across social media. A day later, McCloud got a call from Utah's Kaelin Clay, who endured the same embarrassment two years earlier.

"He just told me to keep my head up," McCloud said, "and that it was a good run."

McCloud's coach had no such words of encouragement. Dabo Swinney was furious. The play, in Swinney's mind, was everything that was wrong with McCloud's game. The kid was as talented as anyone on the team, but there was no appreciation of the details, of how small the margin for error is at this level.

McCloud, to his credit, took all the heat. He met reporters after the Troy game and lamented his stupidity. He kept his head down and endured the furor of his coach. A year later, after myriad other close calls in which he almost broke off a long run, he was still grappling with the idea that when his Clemson career comes to an end, he might be best remembered for that boneheaded play.

And so it was that he approached the goal line on that run against NC State with a real fear that, even in his final steps, something could go wrong, because something can always go wrong.

That, Swinney said, is exactly how he wants McCloud thinking. It just has taken a while to convince McCloud.

"He was undisciplined, and he just wanted to be an athlete," Swinney said. "Eventually he found out he wasn't going to be successful that way."

This doesn't make McCloud unique in college football or at Clemson. As Swinney put it, he has coached a million Ray-Ray McClouds. They come in with plenty of swagger and limited understanding of how the real world works, and then Swinney makes it his mission to divvy out one sour dose of harsh reality after another.

"Ray-Ray came in with all the swag, but the swag don't get it done," Swinney said. "It's the sweat."

That's a little misleading, McCloud insists. The sweat is there -- just not enough for Swinney's liking. If he could only count the times his coach lambasted him for dogging it, only for McCloud to mutter under his breath about how he had spent the day in class, worked his tail off on the field, hadn't eaten in hours. He'd think, just look at the sweat!

What McCloud has come to realize, however, is that there isn't really a debate. The coach wins every time.

"Coach Swinney, even if he's wrong, he thinks he's right," McCloud said.

Take McCloud's pre-snap stance, for example. He has done it the same way throughout his career. He likes it. He's comfortable with it. He's had success with it. Swinney hates it. He calls it a "lazy stance."

And so they argue. Swinney wants it done one way. McCloud isn't sold. Guess who wins.

"He'll be the first to tell you: I've been in his grits since the day he got here," Swinney said. "He and I have had our moments. But I just want him to be great. I want him to reach his potential."

Even as recently as Clemson's bye week last month, when players were supposed to be recuperating and rejuvenating, Swinney was all over McCloud -- sending a message to the rest of the team, McCloud suspects, but does it really matter? It was still McCloud on the receiving end of Swinney's wrath.

In the locker room, teammates tease McCloud, pointing to Swinney and laughing, "That's your daddy." But like most father-son relationships, there's something profound there, and that's what McCloud came to understand this year and why he didn't mind the bye week tongue-lashing.

"He sees something in me that I've got to find for myself," McCloud said.

Swinney loves the kid, seriously loves him. Ask Swinney about McCloud's personality, his sense of humor, his talent, his confidence -- the coach loves all of it. He loves McCloud so much that seeing his protégé amount to anything less than what his potential affords is a failure, and Swinney won't let that happen.

"Sometimes you've got to go meet him right where he is, and you have to pull his butt to where it needs to be," Swinney said. "Sometimes you have to grab with two hands. But he gets there."

Even that flubbed punt return that drew Swinney's ire, McCloud now calls it "a good memory." He says he'll be able to look back and laugh about it, even if Swinney never quite finds it funny.

That's how far their relationship has come. It's not coach versus player anymore. It's a dance, and Swinney leads. But with each step, McCloud gets a little better, a little more dynamic, a little more mature.

This summer, Swinney wandered out to the practice fields where players were fooling around, running some seven-on-seven drills. Just for the fun of it, McCloud decided to play a little cornerback. He played some there in high school, and it got lots of attention on the recruiting trail, but his heart was on offense, he said, and Clemson was happy to have him at receiver. Still, McCloud made a habit of chirping at secondary coach Michael Reed, "I'll take all your DBs' spots." Swinney needed to watch only a few minutes of informal drills to agree.

When fall camp opened, Swinney told McCloud he'd spend a few periods with the defensive backs. There was a need, and the coaches thought he could fill it.

The suggestion appealed to McCloud's competitiveness, of course, but it also said something about how far he had come as a player. He had been Swinney's favorite target for practice field wrath, and now his coach thought he was good enough to play both ways. It's not just that McCloud had the talent. It's that he had refined his skills enough at his full-time job to be given a chance to do something more.

"There's 107 people on the team, and for them to let you play both ways, that's a blessing," McCloud said.

The experiment didn't come to fruition until that NC State game. McCloud had already returned the punt for a critical touchdown, and as Clemson was desperately clinging to a late lead, the defense needed a spark, too. The secondary was ravaged by injuries, so Swinney turned to McCloud to stop the bleeding.

The job was simple: Go into the game on the final drive, and shut down NC State's top receiver, Kelvin Harmon.

"It took me as a surprise, but it was crunch time, and we needed someone to contribute," starting corner Ryan Carter said.

The first throw that went McCloud's way was a bust. Harmon hauled in the catch near the sideline for a 17-yard gain. He caught another for 22. Covering a receiver in a game is a little different than on the practice field, McCloud thought.

But failure wasn't an option. That's what Swinney has taught him. That's what actual failure has taught him. McCloud refuses to be remembered for the plays he didn't make.

"I was like, 'Oh Lord, this ain't gonna happen again,'" McCloud said.

The next throw came his way, too. McCloud was all over it. The ball fell incomplete, and three plays later, Clemson was celebrating a win that all but assured the Tigers a third straight division title.

After the game, Swinney heaped praise on his project. He lauded McCloud's confidence -- "Ray-Ray thinks he's 6-[foot]-5, anyway," Swinney said -- and compared his performance on offense, defense and special teams to Deion Sanders.

This is what coaching is all about, Swinney said. Some kids are easy, but it's the hard cases that make the job so sweet.

"It's exhausting sometimes," Swinney said. "I wanted to fire him many times over the last year or so.

"But he grew up."

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